


far from home

by abscission



Series: the sky is blue and I love you [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Contact, First Meetings, Gen, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 13:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20948759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abscission/pseuds/abscission
Summary: In the times when the lights were dimmed and the star hidden, he even missed Zarkon.For whumptober, day 7: isolation. Heavily AU.





	far from home

**Author's Note:**

> context? what context? *whistles innocently

At first, Lotor tried breaking out. But the natives of the planet he crashed on had a level of technology just tough enough to trap him. His claws rent their flesh, but did nothing against their metals. His strength bent the organics, but it broke against their tempered materials.

They encased him in clear glass, approached him with robotic contraptions, fed him at first gruel salvaged from his ship, then synthesized it themselves. He didn’t starve, and he supposed that was enough.

They were conducting science, Lotor recognized that much. They were trying to find out his biology, and nearby, they had set up a tent for his ruined ship, too. _Not that they’ll get a lot out of that_, he thought, smirking, as the babble of their alien tongue flowed over him, squabbling over Sincline’s holo-display. They were stuck on the reboot screen, and Lotor wasn’t going to utter a single sound to help the activation process along.

And then the curious hairless bipeds brought in new numbers and they dissected the Galran lexicon and set the letters out one by one in the desert sand and began to study his language, and Lotor quietened in wariness. With his quietness, the locals shed their pieces of armor. They built a facility around him, wall by wall, and soon enough the native blue sky was covered up in slate-grey. To the outside world, they left him a single window.

Isolation was a cruel torture, his governess had taught him, and even though it is effective in breaking barbaric spirits the goal of the Empire was to conquer and liberate, not lay waste, so what use were newly annexed aliens if they were all catatonic and shut up in Galra holding facilities?

Initially, Lotor did not keep count of the planet’s revolutions around its star, but when the colors of the vegetation outside his confinement began to turn and he realized this planet had seasons, he regretted it. The chronometer in his suit was functional; but soon, he found, he no longer wanted a reminder of what he had ran away from. No one would miss him back home, which meant no one would come looking.

Lotor took to pacing the admirable breadth of his cell and dragging his claws down the glass just to watch the reactions of the locals. Now and again he amused himself by pretending to be an animal, because the isolation wasn’t total, and he could still get a reaction out of them. The first time someone pointed at his open mouth and screamed a blathering string of sounds and he realized they were pointing at his fangs, he _laughed_.

But the seasons turned from green to red to white to green, and cycle by cycle his mood faded. Deliveries were still sent in by mechanical servants, and Lotor suspected they had not tried subduing him by sheer dint of his physical prowess — he towered over the locals easily, and their ballistic weaponry did not hurt him overlong. They managed to confiscate his sword in the first few revolutions, but they couldn’t take away the revolver in his suit (he never revealed it to them) and the booster rockets on his calf, low on quintessence, could still burn.

So he stopped pacing. He sat down on the sleeping arrangements and studied the locals right back.

They noticed the change in his behaviour. Of course they did. They pointed at him and bickered and gestured to their monitors, and if he was feeling like it, he sneered at them.

Galra were hardier than most species in the known universe, but Lotor began to feel himself slip. He missed his governess. He missed the clanking of his crew, when he still had one. He missed his mother’s pet, all that he had left of her.

In the times when the lights were dimmed and the star hidden, he even missed Zarkon.

Galra were hardier than most species in the known universe, but still Lotor cracked.

“Why did you do it?” He asked his non-shadow on the glass, pretending it was his father until it wasn’t pretend anymore. “I only wanted what was best for _all _our people. Wasn’t Galra supposed to be self-sufficient? Independent? Strong?”

To the robot, he said: “I only wanted to be like you.”

To the cleaning crew, he pleaded: “Why did you banish me? Did I shame you so?”

To the scientists, he screamed: “Look where I am now! Do I shame you now?!”

He no longer cared that they stood stunned, no longer bothered to notice their flurries of motion and shouting and gesturing.

And then, when the sun was up and the world outside a blur of snow and wind, the room filled with scientists and from the crowd three figures split to come forwards. Lotor barely paid them any attention. He missed Daibazaal’s purple sky. He missed the hum of a hyperdrive engine under his feet. If he closed his eyes and pretended, he could be in Sincline right now.

The slim, dark-skinned one of the group rapped on his glass.

Lotor looked around.

It opened its mouth, revealing blunt teeth, and it said _hello_ and smiled. Lotor couldn’t understand a word, but then it phrased a lilting sentence, _I am Lance, and I apologize on behalf of humanity for treating you this way. From today, we will break the isolation and establish contact. _and there was no more pretense that they were not directed at him.

As he stood up, stunned, the alien pointed to itself and said, _Lance_. A sweeping gesture around the facility. _Humans_.

The one with brown hair and pale skin shook out a large roll of writing which it flattened against his glass, and with a shock Lotor realized they have listed out the individual symbols of Galran, although they were missing a few. Did they crack Sincline’s data system? The bigger one dressed in orange picked up something, and mimed writing.

A door whirred open, and a robot wheeled in, holding a stack of paper and a pen and a thick yellow book. Lotor lunged at it, and just as abruptly stopped. What would he even write?

Raps drew his attention. The figure in the center mimed picking things up and flipping through a book.

Lotor did as prompted, and discovered the book was a lexicon. He looked over again, and noticed that the moment he looked at the crowd gathered, their stopped whispering and began scribbling on their notepads.

Primitive, but effective.

The figure in the center was smiling, brighter now, and it pointed between the mimed book and the sheet of Galra letters. They wanted to build a lexicon?

Lotor’s mind had not felt clearer. They wanted to communicate.

Struck with an idea, he strode up to the glass. Instantly, the figures on either side drew back, and the crowd tittered and pressed against the walls of the room, but the figure in the center did not move. It tilted its head back to keep eye contact, and when finally Lotor pulled himself to his full height since the faraway days of the palace, it smiled gently and laid a land on the glass, then waited.

_Convergent evolution?_ Lotor idly wondered, but mostly he admired its guts and its blue eyes. 

“I like you,” he said, careful to pronounce every syllable, the laid his hand against the wall, too, and managed, somewhere in the depths of his psyche, to excavate a smile in return. “I am Prince Lotor.”

**Author's Note:**

> is this whump? what is whump. what is a genre.
> 
> let [me](https://burntheupholstery.tumblr.com) disappear into the bottom of bottle, thanks.


End file.
